Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Pre-E3 Previews

A trio of new previews for Funcom's Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures have surfaced, all of which are based on a pre-E3 demonstration of the PvP-heavy MMORPG. The first is at GameSpot:
Your first quest is given to you by a fellow refugee, who speaks to you in an interactive cinematic sequence complete with camera close-up and branching dialogue options, reminiscent of single-player games like Knights of the Old Republic and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. As we soon learned from this conversation, another survivor from the slave galley has washed ashore--the head slaver, who has fled to the nearby town and must be slain before he can alert the authorities to your presence. Along our path, we also found a half-naked Stygian woman bound to opposing trees by her wrists--we spoke with the woman in another cinematic dialogue to find that in order to free her, we'd have to forcibly convince a scavenger to part with the key. We readied our splintered oar and went hunting.

The second is at IGN:
We also had a short opportunity to check out some of the spellcasting available. Spells are cast pretty much like most MMOs in that you hit a shortcut key or use the mouse to hit the icon in order to activate the spell. Certain spells can be activated and then can be cast again simply by placing the mouse cursor over a target and hitting the mouse button. This allows for quick use of a direct-damage spell that doesn't have a recharge time. The most useful combo at our disposal for combat was a quick cast of a lightning spell that also acted to root the enemy in place followed by a barrage of a powerful area effect fire spell while they were stuck in place.

And the third is at 1Up:
If you time your attacks properly, you fight a lot faster, and you can even randomly cause bloody fatalities like beheadings and disembowelment. It's different from the hands-off fighting of other MMORPGs, but the button mashing can be a bit repetitive, and facing your foes definitely takes some time to get used to. If you use magic attacks, your moves are bound to the F1-F8 keys, and these seem to be a bit easier to master but lack the strategy of melee attacks.